Court saves trees from SM Baguio expansion, for now

A local court on Tuesday temporarily stopped the removal of 182 pine and alnus trees in Baguio City for the expansion of SM mall, an issue that has galvanized the city's environmentalists and triggered calls to boycott the nation's largest mall chain.

 

The Baguio City Regional Trial Court granted the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL)'s urgent motion for a temporary environmental protection order (TEPO) on the cutting of the trees. The order will be in effect for three days.

 

The TEPO was granted after residents and environmentalists protested SM Baguio's plan to clear the area to build a parking lot and an entertainment plaza.

 

 

 

“SM City Baguio has pulled all the stops to transfer the affected trees in the area. It recognizes that these contribute to clean air, are a vital part of the city’s environs and a legacy for Baguio’s future children,” the statement read.

 

But Gloria Abeo of the Cordilleran Global Network (CGN), a group opposing the cutting of the trees, said that SM “has already started to cut 12 trees along the Gov. Pack Road area where the supposed expansion project of the mall chain.”

 

Dean Cuanso of DECAT World, which is also against SM’s move to clear the trees in the area, said the cutting of the trees began at 1 a.m. Tuesday.

 

“[We] started shouting and begging for the operators of the machines to stop. But nobody listened. When the first tree fell, we cried… It was a sorrowful early morning,” he said in a blog entry posted on the website of the environmental group, Greenpeace.  

 

Abeo welcomed the court’s temporary order against the cutting of the trees.

 

“The TEPO provides us space to lodge another petition for a permanent injunction to forever stop the tree cutting and earth balling they claimed will result to a debilitating effect of Baguio’s environment,” she said. — Andreo Calonzo and Maria Elena Gonzales/RSJ/HS, GMA News